In computer parlance, the phrases “copy and paste” typically refer to commands that enable a user to transfer material, such as text, data, files or objects from a source, such as a page of a document, to a destination, such as another page of the document.
When copying and pasting, the user first selects the material, and then activates the copy command to create a duplicate instance of the material. The copied material is then temporally saved in a “clipboard.” The user places a cursor in a different position and then activates the “paste” command to transfer the material from the clipboard to the position where the paste command is issued. This operation is typically used with a graphical user interface that uses pointing devices such as a computer mouse, or by a drag-and-drop interaction, for example.
The copy and paste commands may also be used to transfer material from one application to another application, where each application is typically displayed in a separate window. However, copying and pasting between applications can be cumbersome for the user. There typically are three-time-wasting challenges uses encounter when copying and pasting across two or more applications. One challenge is that the user typically needs to resize the active application window to make room on the screen for the display of other windows. This means that the user may need to frequently scroll within the resized active window because the smaller size is not optimal for the content. Further this kind of window management is not ideal and takes time.
The second challenge is that the user typically will minimize a number of unrelated windows (i.e., convert the windows to the size of an icon along an edge of the screen) so that there are fewer windows obscuring and blocking the source and target windows. Even with all unrelated windows minimized, switching back and forth between the source and target windows may still present a challenge to the user, and if all the unrelated windows are not minimized, the desired source and target windows may be obscured by the other windows, leaving only small and nondescript sections of the desired windows visible.
Another challenge for the user is that when switching between windows, the cursor focus or insertion point in the window (the location in the document where the user is working) is typically lost. This is a result of clicking on a window obscured by the others to bring the desired window into focus and into the foreground. The user must repeatedly find the proper insertion point within each window because the insertion point is lost when clicking on the window to bring into focus. A multi-item clipboard is one known approach, but requires the user to still encounter window management problems when copying and pasting among multiple windows.
Accordingly, a need exists for a method and system that provides an improved a copy and paste experience.